Robin Forestier-Walker

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Robin Forestier...
Central Asia Reporter | Kazakhstan
Biography
Robin has been reporting for Al Jazeera English from Europe and Central Asia since 2008. He was a Rory Peck Award News finalist for his coverage of the inter-ethnic riots in Kyrgyzstan and has covered the country's political upheaval since the ousting of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April 2010. Robin worked for BBC News for six years before going freelance in late 2006. Twitter Robin @robinfwalker

Latest posts by Robin Forestier-Walker

By Robin Forestier... in Europe on May 13th, 2012
Robin Forestier-Walker/Al Jazeera
Moscow poets and writers led a "controlled walk" on Sunday across the centre of the capital to exercise their right to march without harassment. True to their word the police held back. To avoid a confrontation, nobody carried any placards or shouted much in the way of slogans. 

A Mexican wave of applause rippled along the road from Pushkin Square to Chistiye Prudy as the walkers realised with a frisson of excitement just how many of them were in step. 
By Robin Forestier... in Europe on May 11th, 2012

Anti-Putin protests on the streets of Moscow have been ticking over quietly for the past week. Despite President Putin's re-inauguration on Monday, protesters wearing white ribbons on their glasses or their wrists have vowed to continue to gather despite a ban on unsanctioned demonstrations.

Hundreds of protesters have been detained in recent days.

The latest protest site is a leafy park in the centre of the city called Chistye Prudy (which means Clean Ponds). It's an attractive place to eat one's lunchtime sandwich. But something different and exciting is happening there now. 

Tags: Putin
By Robin Forestier... in Europe on May 11th, 2012

Thursday saw Russia's United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) lose 3.6 per cent on the Micex Moscow stock exchange. It has much to do with what happened 1700m up a craggy mountain thousands of miles away in Java. 

The new Sukhoi Superjet 100 was supposed to be the saviour of the Russian aviation industry, and nobody knows yet why the pilots made the deadly decision to take the demonstration plane down to below 2000m near Indonesia's Mount Salak, where it crashed.

By Robin Forestier... in Asia on January 28th, 2012
A rare non-permitted opposition rally was held in Kazakhstan's capital on Saturday [Robin Forestier-Walker/Al Jazeera]

"We demand change!" cried Kazakhstan's All National Social Democratic Party (OSDP) leader Bolat Abilov at Saturday's unsanctioned opposition rally in Almaty. His party is protesting the results of parliamentary elections on January 15 which OSCE monitors declared flawed. The OSDP failed to win a seat.

I was reminded of Kino's Peremen (Changes), an iconic Soviet hit from 1986 that presaged the end of the USSR. "We demand change," went the song.

Slow progress since then was the view among the several hundred who had gathered in the minus-12 degree temperature snowy Almaty. Some even drew comparisons with 1937 - the start of Stalinist repression - and Kazakhstan in 2012.

Such views are not widely held, but fear is commonplace when it comes to political dissent.

By Robin Forestier... in Asia on December 19th, 2011
Kazakh Interior Ministry troops patrol past partially burnt buildings damaged in Friday's riots [Reuters]

The violence that took the lives of at least 14 people in Kazakhstan these past few days is nothing short of disastrous - for the families of the victims and for those who run this country.

The rioting may not have been entirely predictable or preventable. But it was surely possible to have avoided so many deaths.

Friday's rioting in the isolated western oil town of Zhanaozen was an explosion after months and months of peaceful protest by men and women on the main square that had gotten them nowhere. 

They had lost their jobs with state oil company KazMunaiGas for a strike action found illegal by the courts, but they wanted to keep their dignity. Protest, as far as they were concerned, was the only means possible.

It seems neither the workers nor KazMunaiGas was able to hold meaningful talks. NGOs like Human Rights Watch expressed concern that there was no fair legal mechanism to resolve the dispute.

By Robin Forestier... in Asia on November 3rd, 2011
Reuters photo

The results of the Kyrgyz presidential election - the first since the violent ousting of Kurmanbek Bakiyev last year - suggest that Kyrgyzstan, while not quite an island of democracy, is at least an exception in a sea of autocracy. 

The country is surrounded by republics ruled by dictators - mostly former communist party leaders, one of them a dentist - but in Kyrgyzstan something different is going on. 

Last year, a new constitution was written and approved in a referendum. Parliamentary elections were held which were generally free and fair. There was cheating - but everybody was allowed to cheat.

You ended up with a parliament of  power factions with personalities and pals from different regions. While they are not political parties with distinctive ideas and policies, they are political parties nonetheless.

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